An email database is great! But understanding an email database and all the terminology that goes with it? That can be mystifying. So let’s start with a couple of key terms that are essential no matter what your company does or what size your email database.
First, there’s something called a bounce and a bounce rate; a bounce is an email that gets returned to you, and your bounce rate is the percentage of all emails sent that are undeliverable. There are a whole lot of reasons why email gets bounced in one of two ways—a hard bounce or a soft bounce. Someone’s server may interpret it as spam. There might just be an unavoidable glitch beyond your control. You might send a message that’s too big, or your recipient’s email inbox might be too full to accept the message.
You must also understand your open rate—or the amount of people that actually open the email—which may in fact be affected by the industry you’re in as well as how good of an email you’ve crafted. Once you understand those key factors, you can start to implement ways to improve your email communications. This graphic by “The Payroll Blog” works through all those different aspects of email receipt and improvement.
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